Baggage and Barriers
by Invisible Irene
Summary: A rather tragic encounter between Draco and Myrtle a few months after the end of the War.


_AN: What you are about to read is a drabble written at 2am by an author who wasn't afraid to depress her borrowed characters, confuse her readers and rape italics. You have been warned._

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Baggage and Barriers

To go through that door had been a shy and awkward movement, for what lay beyond it right now seemed a past somehow misplaced in the present, but he knew that sooner or later he would have to do it.

"Draco! I thought you were dead! Thought you'd died and didn't even come to stay with me..." Myrtle greeted him at the sight of his face, but, at the sight of his corpse-like body, she added, "You're not... Trying to, are you?"

"What does it matter? You would be glad if I said 'yes', wouldn't you?"

"Of course not," she said.

Why not? Why did people want him to be alright? He was not alright and he would never be, but it did not matter. He used to like to believe that he had to stay sane, that he had to be strong until the end of it all, but now, the end had come and it was not the beginning of anything, as everyone else seemed to think - it was the _end_.

However, he could never expect anyone to understand that, so he listened to Myrtle's ramble, "as much as I...want you...I don't- I mean, if you- Draco, my family wasn't even all that fussy about me and yet- Besides, it's really awful being dead. I keep telling you and you still don't believe me."

"I'm not trying," was the monotonous, neither true nor false reply.

"Are you sure? You're so...pale, so thin... People are commenting, you know."

He snorted at the thought of the retards that lived out there thinking themselves kind for pitying a creature they had the daring to say they understood.

"So, how are things?" Myrtle tried to change the subject so as not to upset him further.

How _were_ things? Worse than they had ever been. All his passion was gone and it did not really matter whether he was dead or alive. The only half-hearted wish left with him was maybe going back home to his mother, but that seemed unreachably far away.

"I have to go."

"Why?"

"Charms."

"You spend a whole _year _without even looking at my face and when you do come here you say you have to leave for _Charms_?! You've never even _liked _Charms! You boys are _all_ the same..." whined Myrtle fiercely.

"If it weren't for me they would have gotten rid of you a long time ago, alright?"

"If they had you would have suffered more than I would," she blurted without thinking.

"I don't need you, Myrtle."

"Then why did you come tell me to 'shut the hell up and hide' that day?"

'That day' would be hard to forget for both of them. 'That day' had been the one when they were threatening to remove the ghosts from Hogwarts and it had been when Draco and Myrtle saw each other for the first and last time that fearsome year.

"I- I pitied you, that's why," said Draco defensively.

"You're lying. You didn't want them to take me away. I know you like me, Draco, I know it! You know it too," Myrtle tried desperately to stop him, but Draco kept taking more steps towards the door. "No, please...Please stay... Please, Draco. Not even the other ghosts talk to me anymore, you're the only one I have left, please! _I_ need you."

Then the young man paused when he was standing right on the threshold, facing outside. Maybe he would like to stay, at least it was better than _out there_ with _them_ but- too many _memories_. They chased him restlessly, dark figures attached to him like his shadow, worse than before, in a sense; crawling _inside_ of him.

He had his back to her, his frame shook as if those hauntingly visible bones were ready to fall apart and she felt the piercing need to hold them together. But then, she reminded herself once more that she couldn't help. Some time ago she had believed in that, but every day things had gotten worse and worse and she was not able to stop it. So, she waited instead. It was one thing he had taught her to do - to finally have somebody to cherish and then to burn in the hell of not having them there. Now his body was right there, on the threshold, but his mind...

Crawling _inside_, hovering like dead souls right around his lungs...Failing at fixing the cabinet, then Goyle and Crabbe being rebellious - Crabbe...savage demoniac flames that burn even now - then Sectumsempra - Snape. Never. Again. - Snape...the tower, then- then- death and dead bodies and searing blinding heart-stopping pain and demented Bellatrix and and knives and blood, metallic, asphixiating, a thick deep red river of blood- asphix-asph-as-

"Draco!" Myrtle's cry echoed around the tiled room.

"What?!" he yelled back, startled, still not quite there.

She replied in a sad whisper, "Just don't faint."

For a short moment, he stared at nothing in particular and she looked imploringly at him, silently begging him to tell her he had not given up.

"Myrtle, I am going to Charms," said Draco in a choked, yet somberly final voice.

And then he disappeared out the door, leaving Myrtle to weep while she wondered if he would ever come back, if he would be able to heal on his own and if the world out there would be too cruel to him. For years she could but to wonder... Or was it months? Or days? She wondered.

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_AN: Please take some time to review :)_


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